


Brooklyn Summer

by stereobone



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3905638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereobone/pseuds/stereobone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Looks like you found me instead," Steve says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brooklyn Summer

The summers in Brooklyn were hot. The sun beat off the brick and cement body of the city, heated everything like an oven. Men would walk down the street with sweat bleeding out from their white cotton blend shirts. Women would hang out their windows in only their cream slips, fanning themselves with manicured nails. They'd let the fire hydrants go and kids would run in the blasting cold water like icicles on their sunburned skin. Most days Steve would hang out the window of Bucky's apartment and hope for a breeze, hives threatening to break out under his collar. Bucky next to him on the bed reading pulp magazines. They'd lay around with cool washcloths on the backs of their necks, Bucky stripped down to his undershirt, Steve embarrassed of his baby bird thin body and refusing to unbutton. When the sun dipped behind the line of buildings and it got cooler, they'd venture outside and buy sodas, walk the sidewalks of their neighborhood until it got too dark.

But some days they went out, the two of them, Steve always a step behind, and they'd hang with the other kids in the neighborhood, throw rocks at passing cars and pretend to shoot birds from the sky with their fingers aimed like guns. Those were Bucky's friends, not Steve's. Steve was too skinny and couldn't keep up when they were running. Steve never wanted to steal cigarettes from the grocer. But they liked Bucky, so they tolerated Steve. And Bucky liked Steve, though sometimes Steve couldn't figure out why. He always threw his arm around Steve at the end of day and messed up his hair with his knuckles, laughing like they'd made so many memories. And they had, really. Steve would go to sleep at night with his heart swelling in his thin chest, remembering the day in the ceiling above him.

One of the hottest days, the heat bled into the evening, no relief even when the sun set behind the buildings. On these kinds of days, everyone was irritable, sticky-hot and ready to beg for relief. They were all sitting on Joey's stoop, brains cooked, lazy and slow from the heat, bored. Bucky nudged Steve's foot with his own and Steve nudged back, then Bucky again, and the two of them played their own quiet game, grinning, the weather momentarily forgotten.

"Hey," Joey said. "I got an idea. Let's sneak into that old building by the boxing gym."

"Near old Brock's place?" another kid, Lenny, said. "Ain't nobody allowed in there."

"That's why we sneak in, dope." Joey nodded at Bucky. "It'll be fun, right?"

Bucky pulled his foot away from Steve's, attention refocused. "Probably a lot of old junk in there…maybe something good."

"Yeah," Joey said. "Come on, sun's down, no one's gonna see us."

They all started picking themselves up from the dusty stoop, wiping their pant legs. Steve didn't get up. Bucky noticed, because he noticed all things when it came to Steve. He leaned back, eyebrows drawing down.

"What's wrong?"

"I dunno, Buck," Steve said. "They condemned that building for a reason, you know?"

"Aw, come on, Rogers," Lenny said. "Quit being such a stick in the mud. We're not gonna mess anything up."

"It'll just be for fun," Bucky said.

Steve still held back. It wasn't that he was afraid of getting caught. He had a bad feeling about it. He didn't know how to say it without Lenny and Joey making fun of him.

"I just don't think it's a good idea," he said, voice lower, talking mostly to Bucky.

Bucky held his gaze and then nodded, sighing.

"You guys go on ahead," he said to Lenny and Joey. "Steve and I are gonna go back to my place."

"Suit yourselves," Joey said. "If we find nudie mags in there, we ain't sharing with you."

"You wouldn't know what a nudie mag was if it flew into your face," Bucky said.

He shoved Joey, friendly, and the two boys jumped off the last step of the stoop with rubber limbs, making their way down the street. Bucky watched them go. Steve felt guilty, knew Bucky wanted to follow. But he wasn't going to leave him behind.

"Sorry…" he said.

"Those two'll probably get caught by the cops anyhow," Bucky said.

He extended a hand and helped Steve up, both their palms sweaty.

"Come on," Bucky said. "I think there's stew tonight."

They walked their sandy limbs home, not another thought with Joey and Lenny. Not until the next morning, when they were asleep on the fire escape to beat some of the humidity, praying for a breeze. Bucky's mom came rushing into the room, the floors creaking under her worried feet and waking them both. Her eyes erupted in tears when she saw them and she leaned out the window, breasts hanging against the sill.

"Oh, thank the Lord," she said. "Thank the Lord."

"Ma?" Bucky said. "What's wrong?"

She stopped speaking and her eyes went low, and immediately Steve knew something happened.

"Your two friends Lenny and Joey," she said. "Guess they snuck into an old building last night…floor gave out underneath them."

Bucky sat upright, scrambling, and grabbed his mother's arm.

"Well, what happened? Are they all right? …Ma?"

His mother reached up and stroked his cheek, eyes still shining.

"They're in the hospital now," she said. "Lenny broke his legs. Joey hasn't woken up yet."

They all went still. She didn't have to say anything else for them to know he might not wake up at all. Bucky's mother kissed his face, whispering to him how glad she was that he was safe, that they were _both_ safe, and then told them to get inside for breakfast, that they could go to hospital after. Once she disappeared from the windowsill, Bucky turned back toward Steve, his face blank. Steve didn't breathe. He felt bad—Joey and Lenny didn't like him, but they were still good kids.

"Bucky…"

"You saved me," Bucky said. "I would have gone with those two if it weren't for you. Who knows what would have happened."

"No." Steve shook his head. "I just—"

"You had a bad feeling, right?"

Steve looked at Bucky, then away, down to the blankets they'd piled on the fire escape as a makeshift mattress.

"Yeah," he said.

Bucky clapped his shoulder, smile thin and sad, and then stood up.

"I'm supposed to be saving your hide, you punk," he said.

Steve stood up with him and they climbed back inside the window, the house warm from cooking.

"Not always," Steve said.

\--

They hit dead ends faster than anything else. A lead in Rome turns cold, another in Moscow. In Frankfurt, Sam gets shot. They're following Bucky's shadow one minute, and the next has Sam stumbling backward clutching his shoulder, eyes shut in pain. Steve drags him off the bridge, their bodies angled low. The entry wound is so clean Steve knows it was a sniper. He doesn't bother to look for it, though. He figured they wouldn't be the only ones searching for Bucky, just doesn't know who. All he does know is that it wasn't Bucky. It wasn't him.

After that, they fly home. Fury helps them get a private jet, because he may no longer be director of SHIELD, but he's still one of the most influential and powerful men Steve knows. The whole way home, Sam keeps telling him that it's not his fault, that he was fine and Steve should stay, keep looking.

"He's not going to be found if he doesn't want to be," Steve says.

"Well, he's had practice," says Sam, and they both go quiet.

It's been two months since Bucky dragged Steve from the river. They fly into New York and Sam is taken to a VA center for further treatment, and yeah, Steve feels guilty, even when Sam gives him a thumbs-up in the gurney, smiling with that gap between his teeth. Steve goes home and his apartment is hot and there's a heat wave, everything sticky. He sits in the fat leather chair by the window and falls asleep to the sound of the air conditioning howling through the vents, cold in a strange way.

He wakes up to his phone ringing. It's Sam, stable, and flirting with a nurse if the short but amused laughter in the background is anything to go by. Steve smiles at his voice, the way Sam bounces back from things.

"I picked the wrong time to get shot," he says. "I'm telling you what. It's got to be the hottest day of the year. I'm sweating my ass off in here."

It shocks Steve silent. For a moment he doesn't know why, and then remembers all at once, and his foot twitches against the wood floor. Sam asks if he's still there.

"Yeah," Steve says. "Sorry, just…the heat is making me slow."

"You? Slow? Yeah, I'll be sure to test that next time we go jogging."

Steve laughs. He's shaken. He feels very strange, not quite sad, but his body feels heavy with remembrance. There's a muffle voice Sam's end that sounds like a scolding, and Sam's voice, _all right._

"Hey, man, I have to go," he says. "The nurse is giving me a hard time, acting like I got shot or something."

"Strange," says Steve. "Rest up, I'll be by tomorrow."

"Holding you to that."

The call ends. Steve sinks back against the leather, still so heavy feeling he can't imagine moving. He sits there until the sun sinks behind the buildings, then he's up and out the door.

\--

It's still a building, which surprises him. Riding down there, Steve was convinced of a few things. First, that he would not remember the way. Brooklyn had changed so much in the way that it hadn't changed at all. There were buildings he knew, remembered, but they were not the same anymore. They were eco coffee shops, luxury apartments, artists' spaces. And he was sure this building would be the same—reinvented, rebranded. It had been, maybe, thirty years ago. But now it stands condemned in its lot, windows boarded up. Seems like the building never got much of anywhere. Steve didn't take a wrong turn once getting here.

He climbs in the broken window by the stoop and lands with both feet crunching glass on the floor below him. It's pitch black and humid, Steve's collar immediately sticking to his neck, though the streetlight provides some illumination, mostly the graffiti on the walls, empty beer cans. Steve imagines Lenny and Joey walking through her, kicking at old bottles, laughing. Maybe the floor cracked a bit and they ignored it. Maybe they had no warning.

Joey did wake up, two days after. Steve and Bucky went to see him in the hospital, and then Lenny just next door, both his legs propped up and wrapped in thick white plaster. They made jokes with both boys once the initial shock wore off, comments about mean nurses and getting to miss school. No one mentioned how Bucky and Steve could have been there. How close they both came to being in those beds, broken legs or worse. But it hung in the rooms each time they went to visit, the unsaid, selfish accusation of someone who's been injured: _it should have been you too._ Instead Bucky wheeled Joey through the halls in his wheelchair and made screeching noises through his teeth. Steve played cards with Lenny and let him win. He thought things mind change between them with both boys got released, but it didn't, not really. Lenny walked with a limp for nearly a year after and Steve's body still fought against him and no one was in any rush to hang out with him. No one except Bucky.

The noise of a squirrel in the building sends Steve whirling, and then the crush of disappointment when he sees the rodent jump over an old pizza box and into a hole in the drywall. He does laugh at himself, just a little bit. He knows why he's here. And he did think, just maybe, that Bucky would be here too. Hottest day of the year, Sam said. Steve stands in the building a little while longer, the distant sound of cars like a wave. Then he leaves the same way he came out, and swears the building is laughing behind him.

\--

When Steve gets back to his apartment, Bucky is sitting in his fat leather chair in the dark, and Steve knows it's him immediately. Knows by the outline, the smell, the feeling in the room. He doesn't do anything when he sees him, doesn't prepare for a fight. Steve just stands there with all his defenses down.

"You've been looking for Bucky," Bucky says, as if he's still not sure of his association with the name.

Steve hesitates to turn the light on for fear of spooking Bucky, Bucky like a rabbit or a deer. But he does, and Bucky doesn't flinch, though Steve can see him better now. His hair is pulled back into a ponytail, wearing a zip-up sweatshirt despite the heat, black jeans. There are purple shadows under his eyes, stubble dotting his cheeks. Steve has too many things he wants to say. Everything he can think of sounds like an accusation or a plea. _Where have you been? Why are you here? Will you stay?_

"Looks like you found me instead," Steve says, aware of how long the silence has stretched, how cracked his own voice sounds.

Sweat is making a slow trail down his back and neck but Steve stays locked in place. Bucky watches his eyes and Steve wonders how long it's been since he's slept well.

"What are you doing here, Bucky? What do you—?"

"I don't know," Bucky says, and stands, the agitation obvious in his stance.

To Steve right now, Bucky is a trail of smoke. He could disappear at any moment. If he reaches out to touch him, he might just go right through him, and nothing will be left but the lingering smell. Bucky does not disappear. He unzips his sweatshirt and shrugs out of it, white T-shirt underneath. Steve can see the metal arm now, shining under the overhead light. He doesn't stare at it. He looks at Bucky's profile, sunken-in cheekbones like great canyons.

"How long have you been in New York?"

"Two days. From Germany."

"Frankfurt," Steve says to himself, and then exhales. "Do you want some water?"

Bucky doesn't have any water. He watches as Steve drinks from his glass in the kitchen, the two of them sitting at the small table together. He looks lost, eyes scanning the kitchen over once, and then again, and then again. His mouth is turn downward.

"Why did you come here?" Steve says.

Bucky's mouth turns down even more.

"New York has—"

"No," Steve says. "Why did you come _here_?"

Bucky follows the same trajectory for a moment, eyes on the empty glass, the over the kitchen once more. Does he expect, Steve wonders, for someone to burst in here any moment and take him away?

"We grew up together, didn't we?"

Steve twists his empty glass and his hand and wishes for more water.

"Yeah," he says. "We did."

Bucky looks hard at the kitchen table, and the memories must be trying surface in there, fighting their way through years and years of burial. Then Bucky stands abruptly. Steve stands with him, aware that Bucky might be preparing to flee, and aware that he'll do just about anything to stop him from doing that. He won't, he can't, face losing him again.

"You were always saving my hide, you know," he says, and the memories make him smile melancholy.

Bucky stands there breathing too heavily, both fists clenching, then releasing. Steve works his way slowly around the table, nothing between them not but hot summer air.

"But you saved Bu—me, once," Bucky says.

It feels a lot like a sheet of ice has run through him. Steve has to fight to keep himself grounded, to not leap to the conclusion he wants to leap to.

"Buck…"

"I remember that night. I remember you on the stoop."

"What else do you remember?"

"Flashes. Moments. I don't know." Bucky squeezes his eyes shut like it's painful to try and remember. "They took so much."

"It's okay," Steve says, and reaches for him, fuck anything he'd told himself previously.

Bucky does jump when Steve grabs his arm, but he doesn't pull it away. He looks like he's trying to so hard to remember and it makes Steve angry, the way he's grabbing for a memory that should never have left him.

"We were on the stoop outside Joey's apartment. It was the hottest day of summer." Steve rubs his thumb along Bucky's skin but really, he doesn't know what he's doing right now. "And he and Lenny wanted to go over to that old building—the condemned one. You remember Old Man Brock lived by it? Used to tell us stories about helping build the railroad?"

Bucky doesn't make any move to confirm or deny this information, just stands and listens. Steve keeps going, feeling desperate.

"I didn't want to go, so you stayed with me, but Joey and Lenny fell through the floor and Lenny broke both his legs. They were okay, though. We visited them a few times, and—"

"You told me you had a bad feeling," Bucky says.

"Yeah," Steve says, a whisper, and feels like his voice couldn't get any higher if he tried. "We slept on the fire escape that night, it was so hot."

"You had a bad feeling," Bucky says again.

He presses his palms over his eyes. Steve wonders what the memory feels like. This is why he came here. Bucky's fingers flex and scratch over his scalp. The metal arm makes a clear, mechanical noise.

"But after," he says. "After…I can't remember."

He drops both arms and his eyes look wild, erratic, engaged in some silent battle Steve can't see. So he does the only thing he can think to do in the moment, which is to hug Bucky. He wraps both arms around his ribs and holds him, one hand coming up to rest at the nape of his neck.

"It's fine," he says, into the skin of Bucky's neck. "It's all right, Bucky."

Bucky is silent. He doesn't do anything, not at first, makes absolutely no move at all. And Steve doesn't let go. It seems impossible to, his limbs stuck, so he just doesn't move. Eventually, Bucky's arm, his real arm, finds its way to Steve's back. Then the other. His hands twist Steve's shirt in a sort of frustrated anger, Bucky's head leaning against Steve's now. They stand like that for what Steve would like to think of as a perfect eternity. Then he feels Bucky's breath as he speaks.

"Are you trying to save me again?"

Steve stops himself from blurting out _yes._

"I figured I ought to return the favor a few more times."

They don't part for another perfect eternity. The floor creaks under their feet as they step back, Bucky's hair loose in its tie now, bangs curtaining over his face.

"Stay here," Steve says. "Tonight, I mean."

Bucky looks out into the other room, the couch and chair open.

"Not on the fire escape," he says, firm, and Steve laughs, because for a moment there, that was his Bucky.

"Not the fire escape," says Steve.

\--

History repeats itself. Steve's learned that being alive longer than he was ever meant to be. He wakes up and it's still dark and Bucky is in bed with him, behind him, his right hand holding Steve's shoulder. Steve stops breathing.

"Bucky," he says.

"We used to do this."

It's not quite a question, but he's waiting for Steve to confirm it.

"We shared a bed sometimes," Steve says, and exhales. "I was skin and bones back then."

Bucky's hand leaves his shoulder and reaches for Steve's wrist. He turns it over, examines it, skin burning hot.

"You have the same bones," he says. "The same skin."

Bucky lets go of Steve's wrist and his hand is down over the waistband of Steve's shorts, hovering warm and leaving little to question. Steve grabs his wrist without thinking, not sure if he means to stop or encourage.

"Did we not used to do this as well?"

They did not. But Steve thought about it. He thought about the weight of Bucky in his hand, thought about awkward, tooth-chipping kisses crushed between the couch cushions. He thought about their faces, apple-red, as they watched each other go over the edge. Bucky always had longer lashes than Steve, and sometimes he would watch him on the nights he couldn't sleep and imagine the feel of them on his skin. But they did not do this. Steve brushes his thumb over Bucky's palm, Bucky's weight still settled against him.

"Bucky…" Steve says. "You're still remembering, you're—"

"The two boys…our friends…"

Steve blinks.

"Joey and Lenny?"

"What happened to them?"

"Joey was killed in the war. Lenny passed away a few years back, cancer."

Steve had looked Lenny up. He'd look up everyone he'd known back then, with the foolish and false hope that any of them might be alive, or not near death. He'd never been lonelier than at that moment, a city of millions and not once face he might know. He feels very awkward saying this, the tips of Bucky's fingers underneath the elastic of his shorts. He had wanted this for a very long time.

"So there's just us from back then," Bucky says.

There's Peggy, Steve thinks, but cannot bring himself to say her name when they're like this.

"Is that why you're here?" Steve says. "We've been looking for you, Buck."

There's no answer. Steve cranes his neck to look over his shoulder and sees Bucky there with his eyes still open, focus uneven.

"Bucky—"

Bucky kisses him. His fingers are spread and flat over Steve's pelvis and his mouth is very dry. When his tongue presses against his, Steve's heart jumps straight to his ribcage. And Bucky pulls back just as quickly as he came in, looking simultaneously more and less confused about anything and everything. He doesn't know why he's here.

"You should sleep," Steve says, despite the tingling in his groin and the rush of lust he hasn't feel in too long. "You can stay here."

And Bucky does, his arm still draped over Steve's side but less suggestive, body pressed against him. He's all fragments right now, piecing together something that was taken from him. He's not the Bucky from that summer, but then Steve isn't who he was then either. But he's here, now. Bucky is here and Steve can't think of a single thing to do with him right now except sleep. So he falls asleep like that, Bucky's heartbeat steady and knowing nothing more than that. He sleeps and it's dreamless, and in the morning, Steve wakes up sweating and tangled in his sheet, and Bucky is nowhere in the bed, nowhere in the apartment. There's a note Steve finds on the kitchen table, pinned underneath the water glass he'd used last night. In clear black ink, it reads: _coming back._ For a moment, Steve is confused as to who is saving whom.

He folds the note and puts it back where he found it. He doesn't know if he just made a mistake or not. He opens the window by his sink and a warm breeze comes in, cooling the sweat over his brow and neck. There's honking below, the sound of people living. Steve turns on the radio, the tinny male voice crackling out, "Good morning, Brooklyn, hope you all survived yesterday, because it was sweltering. Reports say it was probably the hottest day we'll have all summer, though, so rest easy—" and Steve shuts the radio off.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an embarrassingly late birthday present for the amazing and wonderful [Onorobo](http://onorobo.tumblr.com/)! Like, over six months late. But it's here now and I hope you enjoy it! ♥


End file.
